


All This Time We Heard Alarms

by NeoVenus22



Category: Animorphs - Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:09:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeoVenus22/pseuds/NeoVenus22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I wish I'd been a Controller.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All This Time We Heard Alarms

I wish I'd been a Controller. I wish that there had been a slimy Yeerk filling the cavities in my brain and dictating every breath of air passing throughout my body.

I've been Controlled. Yeerks have slipped into my head, and I've been a slave. It's a horrible thing. Watching, hopeless, motionless, stuck in your own body but having no command. Everything you do goes against everything you want to do. It's hell. It's absolute hell.

But then it wouldn't be my fault. Rachel's death, Tom's death, seventeen thousand Yeerks flushed into nothingness. None of it would be my fault. I would've done it, with my own body, my own hands, my own voice, but it wouldn't be me.

Do you know what it's like to single-handedly wipe out a gigantic population of a people? No, you don't. No one does, no one in the history of the world has ever been quite that ruthless. Not even Hitler. Jake Berenson is worse than Hitler, worse than Pol Pot, worse than any of them, and he's not even legal. Jake Berenson is the saver of Earth and humankind, but he is brutal and vicious. He decimated seventeen thousand sentient beings. He is a bigot, a racist, a ruthless killer, a war criminal.

I mean, I did it to save the human race. So we wouldn't have to suffer like the other races before us. But all of that, all of the destruction wrought by the Yeerks was done as by them as a collective.

I'm only one man.

It's the strangest thing ever, having security. It's not strange that I'm a target for terrorist activity, but it's strange to think that Jake the Yeerk-Killer, the Animorph, the man with a thousand vicious animal faces, needs a few giant guys with giant guns to protect me. Sometimes I think security is there solely for the purpose that I don't let myself get killed. I'm not saying I think about it. But I'm not saying I don't think about it.

Sometimes I lift my face to the sky (whenever I hear a hawk cry), and hope that this time it's Tobias, that this time he'll soar down, and exact the vengeance that he's always wanted and I've always deserved. I wait for him to extend his talons, and dig them through my laughably soft flesh. I've spent so much time learning and experiencing the different functions of different animals, that I forget how vulnerable humans are. It takes less than a pound of pressure to cut skin.

For the first six months, my parents couldn't even look at me. You could see it on their faces, alternated flashes of 'my son, the hero' and 'my son, the killer'. What would they see when they saw Tom? 'My son, the Yeerk'? My son, the victim. Victim of Yeerk domination, victim of beloved cousin Rachel, victim of a cobra morph, victim of a grizzly bear bite to the neck.

I still lived with them, the people that raised me, loved me, and probably hated me for all the sins committed against them. I lied to them. I hid from them. I killed their son. Really, I killed both sons, because the Jake they loved is gone now.

I wish I'd been a Controller, because a Controller would be faking it, would be using my own brain and my own memories to be Jake. Controller-me would be lying, too, but it would be a lie that would let my parents sleep at night.

They must have heard me, every time I did a bird morph and escaped out the open window, soaring back just in time the next morning to change my clothes and go downstairs for breakfast. I didn't sleep once for two weeks. The nightmares got to be too much.

"It's good that you're having nightmares," Cassie says one afternoon. We're sitting on a park bench, and we're holding hands, but there's a distance between us. An inch of physical space, and a valley of emotional space.

I think of the screams and how they never really seem to stop. Even though I know they stopped. Even though I made them stop.

"You sure about that?"

Cassie leans into me. She smells like dirt and the woods and a little bit like some bland, non-girly shampoo. I put my arm around her out of instinct. She doesn't shy away from the contact, and it relaxes me a little. There's still one person who isn't afraid of me. I haven't decided if that's a mistake or not.

"Yeah. It means you're not what they say you are, Jake."

"A ruthless killer?" I joke, but I'm not joking. I hate that she can't avoid hearing what's said about me.

"It means you care," she says, not acknowledging what I've said. "It means you're human." She sits up, stares me down. "You had to make a choice. It was them or us."

This shouldn't be coming from her. This is Cassie, the one who always believed there was another way, a better way. This is something Rachel would say. Something Marco would say. I wonder if he's sent her because he thinks she's the only one I'll listen to. He's probably right. But I'd rather have Marco's pity, Rachel's condescension. Cassie's already saved the world. She shouldn't have to save me, too. Cassie's hand around mine feels like a life preserver, but I can't help thinking I'd rather drown.

I wonder if I should tell her about the other dreams. The ones where it's me on board the Blade ship. Morphing. Killing my brother. Dying in the attempt.

A hawk cries overhead and we both look up out of instinct, even though if it was Tobias, he would have made his presence known. Then again, maybe he's tearing me apart in private thought-speak to Cassie. He has every right to.

Whether it's Tobias or not, I'll never know, because the hawk is gone, and then there's nothing but silence all around us. My opportunity to talk has drifted away on the breeze, but I can't speak, anyway. I can't say what she wants to, needs to hear. I can't be fixed.

Rachel could've dealt with the aftermath. Rachel would've worn her hero status with pride, would've stared down detractors with the gaze of a grizzly. Rachel would have been able to cope with this, with all of this, would've squeezed Cassie's shoulders and laughed and said she worried too much, and shouldn't listen to Marco.

But I just sit there. I'm not Rachel. She did what I couldn't, and now I'm left with it. I have to take Tobias's hate. I have to be the number one news story for days at a time. I have to sit in a park with my sort-of (but probably not anymore) girlfriend, surrounded by discreetly placed security agents. This is all there is now. Once upon a time, there was a battle, a purpose, and a vague longing for a so-called 'normal' life, but I don't even know what that means anymore. This is all there is.

_It should have been me._


End file.
